The Relationship between Diagnosis and Remediation in Reading: A Pilot Study. Research Series No. 37.

Weinshank, Annette

An empirical examination was undertaken to determine the relationship between reading problems diagnosed by experienced reading clinicians and the initial treatment plans proposed by them for a case. Twenty-four diagnosis/treatment protocols for eight experienced reading clinicians were analyzed in terms of clinician agreement on treatment categories within and across cases, association of diagnosed problems with treatments (PTA), and the correlation between diagnostic consistency and remedial consistency. Results showed that while the clinicians studied agreed on the use of a subset of treatments across almost all the cases, the extent of agreement varied. For any given diagnosis, diagnostic statements outnumbered treatment statements four to one. Of those treatments that were offered, approximately half were composed of some combination of the five core treatments (phonics, word analysis, sight words, visual discrimination/memory, and oral reading). Clinicians with lower diagnostic agreement had lower PTA agreement; those with higher diagnostic agreement had higher PTA agreement. (FL)